TAM host not loading v10.8

[Hans Manhave]

What do I need to look into if tamhost isn't loading when logging into TAM?  It will work fine five times out of six. Then it will choose not to load.  I understand v11 has no host, but my msoffice installs won't let me go there right now.

[Mark]

What do I need to look into if tamhost isn't loading when logging into TAM?  It will work fine five times out of six. Then it will choose not to load.  I understand v11 has no host, but my msoffice installs won't let me go there right now.

Check your path variable (environment variables).  Have you installed anything lately?  I've seen TAM behave exactly like this if your path variable is too long.  I can't install the fiery (for our MFP) software on my workstation or TAM host will not load.  If I remove the fiery entry from the path variable it works perfectly.  however, other workstations that have fiery do not have this problem, so ymmv.

[Lance Bateman]

Mark's right - if the path (see regedit) is too long, it often won't load.

[Mark]

Mark's right - if the path (see regedit) is too long, it often won't load.

Don't know that you need to bother with regedit.  Just right-click on Computer (or My Computer) -> Properties -> Advanced -> Environment Variables.

I usually highlight and copy the current path variable to notepad so that it is easier to view and so that I can save what is currently there in case I need it later.

[Hans Manhave]

I do have a nice long path, including fiery. I guess this is a 16bit limitation. How funny. Must keep fiery and others. Maybe I can make batch files for certain situations to adjust the path as needed.
Thanks for the replies.

[Jeff Zylstra]

Silly question, but isn't there a way to increase the memory size for the environment?  Or is there a character limit that restricts the path setting?

[Hans Manhave]

We're limited to a certain number of characters.  With all the "auto" appending by means of %path% type settings, it is hard to tell what it ends up to be at certain points.

Ref: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;832978

Modifying yet one more time...  even though some areas unitize the string in characters, it appears to be more correct to specify it as bytes which appear to run out before the number of characters.  But there too, it appears to depend on OS version, SP release, network, local, web etc. 

[Hans Manhave]

I deleted several seemingly unneeded entries in the path statement.  I also changed the order of the entries.  Surprisingly, or maybe not, this has made my machine operate slightly faster.  I don't know if I took out something I needed, but I saved the old and new statement in a text file for future reference.  There was also a semi-colon followed by a semi-colon.  So somewhere something got inserted or extracted incorrectly.  I have no idea if that impacted anything.  I normally use msconfig and take out pieces that were inserted and not needed to start, but had not paid attention to the path.  I will look at some other machines and see if they also need attention in this area.

[Mark]

Hans,

Since it was working previously, it might have actually been that double semicolon that was causing issue. Just basing that off of TAM's finickyness.

[Hans Manhave]

Hans,

Since it was working previously, it might have actually been that double semicolon that was causing issue. Just basing that off of TAM's finickyness.

  I'm not putting it back to test.   

[Marie (Zionkowski) Gozikowski]

Thank you, thank you, thank you Mark!

I have been screwing around with this problem for over 6 months,
have called Applied numerous times, upgraded TAM, following all
the documentation available, and had them dial in to my machine
many times... with no results.

Here all I had to do was clean up my environment path... now WHY
did no one at Applied tell me this?

[Mark]

HAH!  Well, happy to help Marie!  I, too, was in the same spot as you about 5 or 6 years ago until someone finally suggested I try that.  I was so frustrated at the time, this was burned into my head. 

[Bob]

Roxio is really bad, comes with most Dell PCs.

That app alone adds all this to existing path.  I removed it since I use iTunes to burn any music.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Roxio Shared\DLLShared\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Roxio Shared\OEM\DLLShared\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Roxio Shared\OEM\DLLShared\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Roxio Shared\OEM\12.0\DLLShared\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Roxio\OEM\AudioCore\

[Mark]

Yikes!

I like to have a folder designated to be in the path, for example on my home Win 7 box I created C:\users\Mark\bin and have added that to my path so that I can put bat files, putty, etc in the folder and have it accessible from anywhere.

This is my port from Linux of /usr/local/bin  LOL

[Marie (Zionkowski) Gozikowski]

Yep, that is what I deleted... all the Roxio info.  The strange thing is, that has been there since I purchased the Dell, and it worked fine for 6 months, then nothing. 

Thanks again, Mark... this made my day!